Barack Obama and his Obamacare administrators are continually making laws, through blogpost
(suspending the employer mandate) and bulletin (suspending the individual mandate). This, even
though the Framers of the Constitution said that it was Congress that would make the laws; the
president is just supposed to faithfully execute them.

Meanwhile, members of Congress are, on one issue, moving to make foreign policy — something that
for more than a century has been largely left to presidents. This became apparent last week when 26
senators, 13 Democrats and 13 Republicans, co-sponsored a bill to increase sanctions on Iran.

This is not a new idea. The House voted to increase sanctions in July. And it was sanctions, and
the threat of increased sanctions, that surely drove Iran’s leaders to the negotiating table, where
they hammered out an interim deal with Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva in November.

That agreement, however, left members of Congress of both parties — and the public —
dissatisfied. For the first time the U.S. recognized, tacitly, Iran’s right to possess the
centrifuges used to enrich uranium up to the levels needed to produce a nuclear bomb.

It does not take much time or effort to increase the level of enrichment from current to
bomb-ready levels.

The agreement leaves a final version to be negotiated in six months. But that period begins only
when some still-unsettled issues are agreed on.

So Iran has more than six months, as things currently stand, to advance its nuclear program —
during which time sanctions will be softened and economic pressure on the mullah regime will be
reduced.

The public, which tended to give Barack Obama and his foreign policy positive marks during his
first term, has tended to oppose Kerry’s Iran agreement, polls show. Evidently many ordinary
citizens who don’t follow issues closely share the fear of many well-informed members of Congress
that the United States is giving up too much and gaining too little.

The sponsors of the Senate sanctions legislation include leading Democrats, such as Foreign
Relations Chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey and New York’s Charles Schumer, who has been
something of a consigliere for Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Six of the 13 Democratic co-sponsors are up for re-election in 2014, as are four of the 13
Republicans (another Republican is retiring).

The top Republican is Illinois’ Mark Kirk, a leader on the issue. He is joined with Arizona's
John McCain, South Carolina's Lindsay Graham and New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, who work together on
many foreign-policy issues, and prominent freshmen Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of
Texas.

The Senate bill would impose increased sanctions six months after the Geneva agreement goes into
effect unless Iran agrees to certain specified conditions. Top House leaders, including Foreign
Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce of California and ranking Democrat Elliot Engel of New York,
seem ready to pass similar or identical legislation.

Backers argue that it would give administration negotiators leverage over Iran to gain agreement
on objectives the president has often said he seeks.

The administration doesn’t agree. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said flatly last week
that the president would veto the bill. Administration lobbyists have been beseeching Democrats not
to back it.

Their arguments don’t track with their stated objectives. They say they fear that Iran will walk
out of negotiations if more sanctions are threatened. But tough sanctions are what brought them to
the table.

They say new sanctions could be passed later. But the Senate bill doesn’t put them into effect
until later.

They argue that Iran won’t ever agree to end uranium enrichment. But the whole point of
sanctions is to get the mullah regime to do something it doesn’t want to do. If getting to yes were
the only objective, we might as well just accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

It’s not clear that the sanctions bill will ever get to the Senate floor. Even high-caliber
sponsors such as Menendez and Schumer may be less persuasive with Harry Reid than calls from the
White House.

But it is clear that there are majorities — solid bipartisan majorities — in both houses for
additional pressure on Iran and for insistence on a final agreement that ends the threat of Iranian
nukes rather than one that puts it off for another day.

In this regard, Congress seems to be reflecting the will of the American people. Will the
administration listen?

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.